74 USEFUL BIRDS. 
had been taken in immense numbers. A single child had 
been known to come in at night with a hundred eggs, and 
the number of birds’ eggs destroyed in the country each year 
was estimated at eighty to one hundred millions. Before 
such persecution the birds were actually dying out. Some 
species had already disappeared, and others were rapidly 
diminishing. As an apparent result of the destruction of 
birds, the vines, the fruit trees, the forest trees, and the 
grain in the fields, had suffered much from the attacks of 
destructive insects, that had increased as a result of the dis- 
turbance of nature’s balance caused by the decrease of birds. 
In one department of the east of France the value of the wheat 
destroyed by insects in a single season was estimated at five 
million francs. It was concluded that by no agency save that 
of little birds could the ravages of insects be kept down. 
The commission called for prompt and energetic remedies, 
and suggested that the teachers and clergy should endeavor 
to put the matter in its proper light before the people. 
In 1895 I received a letter from Mons. J. O. Clercy, 
secretary of the Society of Natural Sciences, Ekaterinburg, 
Russian Siberia, in which he stated that the ravages of two 
species of cutworms and some ten species of locusts had con- 
tributed (together with the want of rain) to produce a famine 
in that region. One of the evident causes which permitted 
such a numerous propagation of insect pests was, he said, 
the almost complete destruction of birds, most of which had 
been killed and sent abroad by wagonloads for ladies’ hats. 
A law for the protection of birds was then enacted, and, said 
M. Clercy, “The poor little creatures are doing their best 
to reoccupy their old places in the woods and gardens.” The 
reoccupation, however, did not go on as rapidly as did the 
destruction.+ 
Mr. R. E. Turner, in an important paper upon insects, 
read before an agricultural conference at| Mackay, Quecns- 
land, stated that he considered that the decrease of insectiv- 
orous birds, owing to their indiscriminate shooting by the 
Kanakas on the plantations, had a great deal to do with the 
1 The Gipsy Moth, by E. H. Forbush and C. H. Fernald, p. 206. Published 
by the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, 1896. 
